Major project guide

Independently or in small teams, and mentored by a faculty member, students do intensive and self-directed research or creative work that results in an original scholarly paper or other product that can be formally presented on or off campus.

In spring 2014 we invited college presidents, chief academic officers, deans of students and deans of admissions from more than 1,500 schools to nominate up to 10 institutions with stellar examples of undergraduate research/creative projects. Colleges and universities that were mentioned most often are listed here, in alphabetical order.

The common thread uniting the diverse topics is the professional preparation and guidance the students receive at a university with a 12:1 student to faculty ratio, and where no courses are taught by graduate students.

“Samford prides itself on the level of interaction between faculty and students, and nowhere is that more evident than in the undergraduate research students are able to produce under the guidance of their professors,” said Samford’s Assistant Provost Nancy C. Biggio.

Many of the senior presenters clearly already had one foot in graduate school or professional work, demonstrating intense dedication to their subjects, whether sequencing DNA or diving deep into literature. With faculty and peers in their audience, they faced informed scrutiny, both during and after their presentations. Questions of the “did you consider….” variety probed presenters’ depth of knowledge and ability to follow wherever the discussion might wander, with impressive results. All of that gets to the heart of the Showcase, Biggio said. “It prepares them for careers and graduate school in a way that is not possible exclusively in traditional class situations.”

“For the students, I think the greatest value is when they really take ownership of their research, when they are no longer just writing a report, but joining into the conversation as a scholar, inserting their own ideas and framing the discussion with their own insights and perspective,” said Randy Todd, Chair of Samford’s Classics Department. “They then begin a serious conversation both with their primary texts and material resources as well as other scholars, including their mentor or adviser.”

“Once a student gets really invested and committed to their project,” Todd said, “their confidence in their own expertise and their commitment to their own ideas make them effective and convincing.”

Ancient and Modern

The quality and thematic range of Showcase presentations can be seen in two examples which together touch on the subjects of medicine, race, genetics, college athletics, Latin, early Christianity, folklore, geography and the Roman army.

Exercise Science and Sports Medicine majors Jamael Lett and Paul Selmon made a compelling case not only for their thesis, but also for the scholarly value of the poster session, which has become a staple of professional academic conferences. For their project the pair studied Sickle Cell Trait Identification and Testing in NCAA and NAIA Schools, creating a unique and potentially valuable survey.

In fact, Lett and Selmon’s work was so impressive we can’t say much about it here because it might be headed for a professional journal. “We are planning on submitting the work because it may have national implications,” said Alan Jung, chair of the department of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine and adviser to the project. Jung explained that the standards of the discipline discourage promotion of research findings until they have been accepted for professional publication. Suffice it to say, as Jung did, that “it was a well-done project.”

One of Todd’s students–Senior Classics major Kathryn Brock–presented Adventus Christi: Possible Routes for the Introduction of Christianity to Roman Britain. Brock, a professed Anglophile of British ancestry, followed both heart and head to create a fascinating project. “My interests lie in folklore, religion,and the church in early medieval Britain,” Brock said, “so Classics and Latin have really helped me to gain a proper understanding of the world from which medieval period sprang.”

After studying the relevant archaeology, history and folklore under the direction of Classics professors Todd and Shannon Flynt, Brock concluded that, “the [Roman] military is the best explanation for transportation of Christianity to Britain.” In her presentation she described in detail the army’s access and ability to travel safely, the great number of garrisoned soldiers (“nearly one tenth of the entire imperial army,”) evidence that Christians served in the army and evidence of Christian communities associated with Roman forts.

Get A Job!

“I still hope to continue casually researching on my own,” Brock said of her project post-graduation. One can almost hear the chorus of the practical-minded: “What will you do for a living?”  Like many of Samford’s Classics alumni, Brock plans to become a Latin teacher, at least for awhile. This fall she’ll enter a fifth-year alternative masters degree program in education at the University of Alabama and work toward teaching certification with a specialty in Latin. She doesn’t know if she’ll teach Latin forevermore, but, she said, “it’s a good stepping stone to pursue my interests in the middle ages,” possibly leading her back to higher education as a professor like those who were her Samford mentors. First things first, though, for the May graduate. “We’ll just see how I feel after one more year of college.”

summer projects for CSETo elaborate it further, let me put a couple of small examples before unzipping the list of cool CSE projects.Few months back, me and my friends were quite interested in organizing programming contests for juniors. Earlier, our computer Science Association used to post the questions on blog and participants had to submit the solution by sending email. Those solutions were checked manually. We did n't like the idea of manual checking. We put thinking cap on and developed an online judge:.College internet speed in NIT W is quite poor. It was quite hard to communicate with each other in college, especially at evening due to heavy internet traffic, therefore, I came up with a Mini Multicast  Java LAN Chat  Application. It was quite fast as it used to  be run on  direct Connection(No proxy).National Institute of Technology, Warangal alumni used to visit the college for official certificates, transcripts or documents. Anand Rajagopalanthought, the process can become as easy as booking a movie ticket. Alumni can get the required documents without travelling miles. We wrote code, came up with following project NIT WARANGAL online Alumni Request Automation Portal.  Good Summer Projects - The answer depends upon your strong and specialized field, plus your interests.Although, I don't think it would be fair enough to share an idea as the project indulges  the part where we use creativity as well as judgment to find a project idea,  following are some suggested guidelines that may help you. Java Projects: Most of the projects are developed in Java as it contains API for almost every task, easy to use, platform independent and you can easily develop GUI for your project.Java Platformer Game: That's the best and most interesting java project. Almost everyone of us have played Mario, counter Strike, etc. How about making our own game?Making Java Plat-former game is indeed easy with Java default Graphics framework. DEMO:Lan Audio(Voice) Chat : Can be easily implemented in Java with Java-net and Java Sample Audio API.Group Chat in Java: Again it's easy to implement. A basic knowledge of Concurrent Server will do.Media Player in Java:  Easy to implement. Thanks to Java Sample Sound/Audio API. MP3 Extractor from you-TubeText Editor: Designing UI for text editor with Java Swing is a cake walk. Use an advanced data structure like suffix tree, Patrica ,etc for searching.C / C++ Projects:Zip Password Crackers: Any File Can be unzipped through the command line, providing password as an argument. So, write a simple brute force program to generate permutations (possible passwords) and send it to command line, creating and running shell script. Run until you receive a success return call, that's it, the simple Zip Password Cracker Project is ready.Create a Trojan Horse in C: Again that's pretty easy. Run a simple C++ program on remote computer. Intelligently create a huge .dll file in SYS 32 directory and as an impact, eat the hard-disk space of victim's computer. Any Clean up software ignore .dll file, so the only solution is: Victims have to reformat the hard drive.Simple C++ Key Logger Project : A project that records the key strokes of PC and store it in intelligent way. Again, that can be easily done with Microsoft visual C++ SetWindowsHookEx  API. The premiere challenge is you have to be smart enough to outplay Anti-Virus in detecting your key-logger.3D Bounce in OpenGL: Small game project, can be easily done with OpenGL-API for rendering  2D and 3D computer graphics.Regular Expression Parser: C application that parses regular Expression.